Every time I see a Proust quote or read someone’s take on his style or vision, I realize how badly I need to read his work; especially as an intensely nostalgic person who shares a Myers Briggs and Enneagram with him (if you believe in that stuff)! So I bought “In Search of Lost Time” and look forward to starting! Does anyone have any tips about what I’m about to read? I’ve always been a little confused with the 7 volumes all compiled into one. Can you read one and not the other? Do they tell the same long story? Any fun facts on him as a person? Any personal opinions on his artistry? If you love Proust, what makes you love him? Do you not like Proust? Pretty much any thoughts on Proust you have I want to know! I’m ready to fall in love with him like I did Sylvia Plath back in the day!!

I've seen many people describe books as having "beautiful prose", which I've never really understood. I've only valued a book for its characters, themes, ideas and story. I've never really been able to distinguish the prose of a book in much more detail than recognizing the simple language of Hemingway compared to the more extravagant writing of someone like Oscar Wilde. I've never understood how prose could be beautiful when talking about non-poetic things, like in Moby-Dick.

That's before I started reading In Search of Lost Time, though. Proust is describing every little minute detail, however unimportant it seems. His sentences often contain more than two separate digressions whithin them. One page I read contains only four full stops. I just finished reading a full page of the narrator describing the shape of the flowers his great-aunt uses for making tea, and I'm hooked. How can such seemingly mundane descriptions and run-on sentences carry so much weight and beauty?

I've only read about 70 pages, but I can already begin to sense the scale and complexity of this massive work. I am looking forward to getting further into it!

I’ve read many classics over the years, and none of them has hit like this French motherfucker has. On every page, literally every page, there is a show-stopping sentence, a deep philosophical insight, a perfectly realized crystallization of humanity across almost all aspects of existence: fashion, love, economy, class politics, religion, dreams, childhood, friendship, the creative process, deception, vanity, family, you name it.

Even other literature that has blown me away, like Middlemarch or Joyce’s short stories, seem inadequate in comparison. Imagine how good Joyce’s “The Dead” is as a story, how completely it blows you away in those last few pages. Now imagine 3000 pages of that.

Okay, I am about to abort my second attempt at Swann's Way. I have made it through some terribly dull books in the past, but just cannot get into In Search of Lost Time. It is often called the greatest works of the 20th century. I will say that his ideas about memory and time are intriguing, but the narrative just doesn't hold my attention. Has anybody here made it through some or all of the books? If so, was it worth it?

...there is something to be said about his vile omission of Celeste from any arrangement to guarantee her a minimal revenue after his death

He waited till he was literally dying to repeat "quel malheur quel malheur " of this whole situation, or if a check he writes while dying would be honored?

Celeste ! Celeste who gave him her youth, her life!

What a flaming douchebag

In search of lost time specifically. I am bilingual in French/English although I've never officially tested my french level. I was trying to look for an electronic edition where I could bounce between the original and an English translation easily. I thought it could be a good way to both improve my french and read something people seem to think is one of the greatest things ever written. Anyone know which translation is the best? Maybe it doesn't even matter if I'm mostly trying to read it in French.

On the other hand, one of my French friends said he read it, and the only reason to read it is to be able to tell other French people that you read it. It's essentially just a challenge.

I am on a weight loss diet, and one of the recommendations was to occupy my mind with a really long book to distract myself from hunger pangs. I asked ChatGPT what the longest books were, and it said Proust. What really interested me, was that ChatGPT also said Proust spent 22 hours a day in bed and that's how he wrote his books!!!!

How did Proust stay so thin lying in bed all the time??? My weight loss diet has me in the gym all weekend; consuming only disgustingly chalky meal replacement shakes and counting my steps. So much suffering, and I haven't lost a single pound! Yet Proust gets to lie in bed all day writing about the Madeline cakes he's stuffing his face with, and look like a French K-Pop model???? Life is unfair!

Help it make sense???? I checked and he didn't have tuberculosis, so how did he stay so thin????

What was Proust's diet to stay rail thin without doing any exercise? Was he having lots of sex - that's how to burn off calories in bed??

Actually, Dostoevsky’s first published book was a translation of Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet.

Pour moi c'est Max et les Maximonstres, les Claude-Ponti, Elmer l'éléphant, plus deux peut-être inconnus en France : "The little house"* et "Globi"**

• C'est l'histoire d'une petite maison à la campagne qui subit l'urbanisation. Disney en a fait une Silly Symphonies très sympathique si ça vous intéresse, c'est sur Youtube.

** Un perroquet qui enchaîne les petits boulots et aventures en fonction des livres, l'équivalent de Martine en Suisse alémanique, c'est très populaire. Globi à la poste, Globi à l'aéroport, au royaume imaginaire (Globi im Traümland),...

Mr. Proust was born on 10 July 1871, making this day his 155th birthday! I would give him a nice coat and cake for his birthday if he were alive.

The book name is: The Last Wolf / Herman by László Krasznahorkai

Which famous real people, living or dead, can you presume are/were autistic? What factors point to your conclusion?

(disclaimer, this is all speculation; presumably, few of us are qualified to make a real assessment, and even if we were, reading about the life of a famous person would not give enough data)

I’m a French filmmaker and for the last two years I’ve been making picture books of great classics for 4-7 year olds. Monte Cristo, War and Peace, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet… around ten in English now.

My rule is basically: if the book seems easy to adapt, I’m not interested.

And now I’ve arrived at Proust.

I thought War and Peace was the hard one. I was wrong.

The problem is simple: all the others have a story a five year old can follow. Proust… not really. The real subject is memory, lost time, the past coming back. And a five year old doesn’t have much of a past yet. They have yesterday.

There is Combray, waiting for the mother’s kiss, the madeleine obviously has to be there… but I always end up with a cute little story that doesn’t really feel like Proust and, worse than all, that is quite boring. I know because I tried telling it to my kids and they never asked for it again.

So: how the hell would you do it?

Has anyone ever tried adapting À la recherche du temps perdu for very small children, in any language? Even a bad version would interest me at this point.

(Not selling anything, I genuinely need ideas!)

Hi guys! so i’m a 17 year old and i recently got into classics i’ve read camus, nietzche, Dostoevsky, Kafka. I have LOTS of TBRS on my shelf (mainly tolstoy, osamu dazai, more dostoevsky, Camus, nietzche, kafka, Jane austen, mikhail bulgakov) and i wanted to get into proust, I’m planning to get volume 1 of in search of lost time the penguin hard cover edition so i just wanted to know how does proust rank compared to these authors?